Oman Ministry of Health

Librarian, Oman Ministry of Health

The Oman Ministry of Health (MoH) is the primary healthcare provider in Oman. It manages around 35,000 clinicians and administration staff in clinics, polyclinics, health centres and 10 hospitals. These staff need access to a wide variety of publications and medical information resources to improve healthcare provision and support research.

Some of the most important and most heavily used resources are point-of-care databases that doctors, nurses, and other health workers use to provide up-to-date consultation at the clinic, hospital, and even at a patient’s bedside. Previously, but for a few ad-hoc or site-specific services, the Ministry had no enterprise-wide access to clinical information resources. In addition, Oman’s 240 healthcare sites are distributed across the country, many in rural areas where there is limited IT infrastructure. For example, several sites did not have their own IP address, making authentication security difficult. The Ministry needed an effective way to manage and access medical information resources for better healthcare provision. For the tender, the Oman MoH specified that all bids had to be OpenAthens compatible.

The solution

The tender was won by Knowledge E – an OpenAthens distributor in the United Arab Emirates serving the Middle East. The solution delivered by Knowledge E is the Oman MoH e-library information portal. At the core of the solution is OpenAthens MD, which securely and effectively manages user access to online resources. The dual-language portal provides access to a host of clinical information, including mission-critical, point-of-care databases, for all healthcare and administration staff.

As well as designing, developing and supporting the portal, Knowledge E also sourced much of the information content from around the world such as the BMJ (British Medical Journal), Wiley Online Library and Elsevier Health. Knowledge E has incorporated a dedicated search facility in the portal to make it easy for users to find the information they need quickly.

OpenAthens enables single sign-on for users to access any resource they are entitled to use. Administrators use OpenAthens to set access levels depending on relevant criteria such as the need or seniority of an individual or group. To improve management and control, OpenAthens also provides a range of reports on how, where, when and by whom various resources are being used. Because OpenAthens is fully hosted in Oman, it overcomes the problem of poor IT infrastructure and removes the need for specialist IT skills.

The Ministry has been so impressed with OpenAthens that it has expanded its use of the solution to around 10,000 unique registered users including doctors, nurses and other health professionals across the country. The number of users is potentially subjected to increase, as regressive training is being implemented.

Helps improve healthcare delivery and advances healthcare research in the region

Fully hosted OpenAthens significantly reduces the cost and need for complex IT skills or infrastructure

OpenAthens addresses many of the challenges encountered during automation of the registration process

Automating and improving authentication makes it easier to roll out a electronic medical library nationally

Feedback from the customer

Excellent reporting features in OpenAthens give us a clear and accurate picture of how resources are being utilized. In addition, it also shows detailed statistical information about the usage by resources, and/or by users. OpenAthens has drastically enhanced the registration process, yet it has still overcome some of the difficulties that we needed to address.”

Mr. Saad Salaam Alyarbi, Librarian at the Royal Hospital, Oman Ministry of Health

Our doctors and nurses rely on vital, real-time clinical information, best practice and latest innovations to help them provide efficient healthcare services to patients, families and the community at large. This is why OpenAthens and the Knowledge E solution plays such a critical, transformational role in facilitating a quick, simple and secure way to access the point-of-care database information for our clinicians.”

OpenAthens is an essential part of the Oman Ministry of Health e-library. It Not only does it enable simple, quick and secure single sign-on, it also serves as the standard authentication solution for all the world-leading publishers and information resources our staff need to help improve healthcare services. Since deploying OpenAthens, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the use of our information resources.”